Compensation claims nightmare

By Musyoki Kimanthi

Q: My nephew worked as a lorry turnboy and on December 31, 2006, the lorry overturned and he had both of his legs broken. He stayed in hospital for three months. After his discharge, he was ordered to stay in bed for a further one month. His employer paid the hospital bill and gave my nephew Sh1,000 and that was all. He has never been compensated and all the hospital documents seem to have been taken by his employer. Please advice on the way forward.

A: Cases abound of people who have been victims of accidents either on our roads, workplaces or even at social places as it happened at a city supermarket the other day. Some are lucky to escape with minor or no injuries, but others are not so lucky

Doctors at Kenyatta National Hospital attend to a victim of the Molo fire tragedy. Victims of such tragedies find it difficult to get compensation and often they lose. Photo/Evans Habil/Standard

as they die or others live with life-long scars and disabilities. The effect of this is that these people’s future prospects — social and economic — are affected and in most cases diminished.

Innocent victims suffer

I want to believe that nobody wishes that accidents occur and that is why when they do occur, it should be everybody’s concern then that the victims be rescued first. Upon survival, they should be restituted to life as normal as they would have lived were it not for the accident. This is why we have the regime of compensation and insurance as part of our socio-economic system.

Imagine a situation where, owing to the carelessness of a bus driver the bus carrying young and prospective professionals plunges into a river killing all of them, or an apartment owner cooks using charcoal and causes a fire that consumes all the other neighbouring 39 apartments, or a factory explodes causing injury to employees, or indeed a lawyer is not so diligent he causes a client to loose some good money in his manner of handling a brief.

In all these cases, the victims are innocent and should not suffer the consequences of the careless or negligent acts of others. It is only fair and common sense that anyone responsible for another’s misfortune should be made to compensate for it.

Greed for extra coin

But some of these claims may be so huge that anyone faced with such claims may simply be unable to pay up. That is why the law demands that certain trades and professions or simply economic activities must have adequate insurance cover to cater for such claims.

This explains why we have numerous pieces of legislation to cater for the compensation of victims of accidents arising from these economic activities. Examples are the Insurance (Motor Vehicle Third Party Risks) Act, the Workman’s Compensation Act, Fatal Accidents Act, and Occupiers’ Liability Act among others.

The law is meant to protect both the victims and the perpetrator in the unfortunate event of an accident. However, most business people won’t take an insurance cover and pay the requisite premiums because of the greed for that extra coin they imagine they will save.

Fictitious claims

It is only when tragedy beckons that they wish they were covered. It is also a shame that some crooks will rush to scenes of accidents and soil themselves with blood so as to benefit from fictitious claims. It is common to find someone who is adequately insured and has produced all requisite documentation to prove a claim but the insurance company won’t pay.

Whichever the case, our courts have the enormous and unenviable task of sorting out the issues of liability to genuineness of claims to defaulting insurers.

The Minister for Justice made a startling revelation that to date we have 870,000 cases pending in our courts, some averaging five years in age but some even more than 20 years old.

Plato, an ancient Greek Philosopher said that good people do not need laws to tell them to behave responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

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